[Five Three Eight] Blazers Aren’t Playing the Rockets Anymore

I thought Sampson leaving was the reason why defense was going down.

In all seriousness you are correct. It's impossible for the Rockets to think that they can be at an elite level without lock down defense. The Heat, Spurs and Thunder all play defense and there's no way around it.

 

Wish we had Thibs.

 

I'm still fuming inside that we made LMA and Lillard look like basketball gods.

We will suck for the next 5 years until Morey gets a real coach.

 

We couldn't even defend for 0.9 sec SMH SMH

And Les and Morey want us to swallow their decision to retain McHale hook, line and sinker?

 

Those numbers look pretty bad.

I guess it just puts it in numbers what we were actually watching.

It's obvious we need a new defensive coach needed.

Anybody know if there are any moves afoot?

 

I know this is the place to pile on over our defensive deficiencies and I know San Antonio plays better defense than we do....

However...

Part of this stat is also the regression of the Portland offense. I saw with my own eyes Lamarcus Aldridge drain jumper after jumper with Asik having a hand in his face during the first 2 games. That's just basketball. Sometimes guys get hot.

Sometimes, guys hit miracle shots to win games too. That's just basketball.

Did the Rockets win the series? No
Did they play well enough to win the series? An argument could be made for yes.
Do they need to improve regardless? Of course...that's the battle cry EVERY year.
Do I think our fans need to adjust their expectations of how much they can realistically improve?

ABSOLUTELY

 

The funny thing about this thread. And what hurts the most.

No matter how bad our defense was, we still had a chance!!!!

 

I'd say that it would probably be a combination of the unreliability of current defensive statistics in accurately gauging what factors go into a good team defense and some nice stretches of individual defense from some of the players mixed with the luck of the draw on how bad of offensive teams they saw during that stretch.

Really, I dont know...I just know I can tell when I am seeing an effective team defense and I have not consistently seen that all year from the Rockets.

 

A lot of the anger is a direct reaction to the clusterf*** that was the last .9 seconds of the series. A symptom of a far larger problem. We are also tired of hearing the "well we should never be in that situation. we should have been up more more points" argument. Basically - we should not be in those "coin-flip" situations. A lot of us do NOT think our defensive confusion of Lillard's shot was a "coin-flip".

 

Touch Fouls also make you less agressive.
get a few of those and you don't close out as hard


Rocket River

 

Very very true. Sometimes the perception that a team is a defensive juggernaut is enough to let some of those touch fouls go as well.

 

I was mad when the Rockets gor bundled out but it wasn't totally unexpected. The holes at PG & PF have been there all season. It wasn't going to magically correct itself. Beverley being hurt and sick certainly didn't help matters.

 

That seems likely... I guess the fact that I watched all but 2 games this season and was really surprised to find out our defense was so highly ranked should say a lot lol.

When I watch strong defensive teams (Spurs, Heat, Indy, Chi come to mind) -- they seem to get totally dialed in defensively for 3-4 minutes spurts at a time. The opponent may go on a mini-run in-between, but they will always swoop back in with another 3-4 absolutely suffocating minutes and create some separation. I don't really recall the last time I saw the Rockets play solid defense on 3 consecutive possessions, let alone 4 solid minutes.

 

This is not talking about them just making shots, it's saying 51% of the time, we have no one w/in 4 ft of their shooter.

We saw plenty of that with LMA getting wide open shots and their 3pt shooter gets getting wide open shots from time to time.

I like to think this is due to youth and that's probably a large part of it, but I have seen enough of the Rockets to believe they simply don't emphasis or practice much of any defense. And certainly letting your star player off the hook on defense doesn't help with everyone playing their part. Coaching problem.

Also, sure the Spurs have a great system going for a long time with 3 anchors, but they also have plenty of young and new players and all of them play team defense. I think Coaching and team priority is a large part of that for them.

 

It was a combination of so many teams trying to be dead awful and Dwight, there really wasn't a lot good with our defense outside of a stretch in the new year.

 

...because every time we were within 4 feet of a Blazers player we'd get a personal foul or Technical.

Hard to defend again the whistle...& OK, I'll admit that our defence does leave a lot to be desired.

Now I'm about to sit back & hopefully watch Portland Blazettes get dismantled by Spurs.

 

Umm, people are seriously going to defend our crappy defense with touch fouls? Yes, we got called for some BS fouls but a few fouls does not define how you play defense and rotate. That stat says within FOUR feet...not one foot or something. Players simply weren't rotating well.

The sad thing is I can see Mchale using those touch fouls to excuse the crappy defense in his head. "If a few fouls went our way..."

And that's why our defense is going to suck until we get a better defensive coach. Every team gets called for BS fouls, the good teams adjust. The bad teams continue to play crap defense for 6 straight games.

 

The Spurs move the ball so well its beautiful basketball, they will win the championship this year the way they continue to play. The Rockets are not even close to Spur level in the playoffs. I have nothing that I can complain about with them, I think the coach just knows what hes doing and how to win rings its amazing too bad Rockets got the cheerleader MickiHale.

 

I wish we were playing spurs right now, we would be better than blazers. But too bad we gave it to them.